Tag Archive for: judge

Judge Shuts Down Copyright Troll’s Cut-And-Run Effort; Hits It With $40K In Legal Fees

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The art of copyright trolling is completely artless. There’s no subtlety to it. Flood federal courts with filings against Does, expedite discovery requests in hopes of subpoenaing a sue-able name from a service provider, shower said person with threats about statutory damages and/or public exposure of their sexual proclivities, secure a quick settlement, and move on.

It doesn’t always work. At the first sign of resistance, trolls often cut and run, dismissing lawsuits as quickly as possible to avoid having to pay the defendant’s legal fees. This isn’t anything new. And there are very few courts left that treat the rinse/repeat cycle as novel. Judges are calling trolls trolls with increasing frequency and more than a few trolls and their legal representation have turned to theft and fraud to make ends meet.

Via Fight Copyright Trolls comes another decision where a porn-based copyright troll is getting its financial ass handed to it by a federal judge. Strike 3 tried to dismiss a lawsuit when it became obvious it couldn’t prove infringement, opting for a voluntary dismissal without prejudice in hopes of dodging a bill for legal fees. It didn’t work.

After some discussion of the technical aspects of Strike 3’s aborted discovery attempt — which involved Strike 3’s experts failing to find evidence of infringement on the defendant’s hard drive — the court gets down to the business of cutting the troll off at the knees to prevent it from escaping the costs of its bogus litigation.

The court [PDF] says Strike 3 can’t have everything it wants — the cake, the celebratory disposable plate, the opportunity to consume the cake at its leisure, etc. Arguing that this is cool because some other troll tried it doesn’t impress Judge Thomas Zilly.

Unlike in LHF Productions, in which an alleged BitTorrent user’s counterclaim for a declaration of non-infringement was dismissed as moot in light of the plaintiff’s dismissal with prejudice of the underlying copyright infringement claim, in this matter, Strike 3’s voluntary dismissal was without prejudice, see Notice (docket no. 53), and in contrast to the plaintiff in Crossbow, Strike 3 has not provided any covenant not to sue. Indeed, not only has Strike 3 preserved its ability to pursue further litigation against John Doe, it has indicated that it will not consent to a declaration of non-infringement unless John Doe is precluded from receiving attorney’s fees and costs and Strike 3 is explicitly permitted to bring copyright infringement claims against John Doe’s son.

Then the court quotes another case involving yet another copyright troll (Malibu Media) to shut down Strike 3’s “heads we win, tails you lose” exit strategy.

In essence, Strike 3 is attempting to thwart John Doe’s efforts to obtain attorney’s fees and costs by, on the one hand, refusing to dismiss its Copyright Act claim with prejudice and thereby denying John Doe “prevailing party” status, while on the other hand, deploying its dismissal without prejudice as a jurisdictional shield against John Doe’s declaratory judgment claim. The Court will not permit Strike 3 to use such “gimmick designed to allow it an easy exit… [now that] discovery [has] reveal[ed] its claims are meritless.”

The court is going to hand the defendant the victory, as well it should. The burden of proof for infringement rests on the accuser and Strike 3 failed to show any infringement occurred. Since Strike 3 can’t prove this — and its attempt to dismiss the case makes it clear it has no intention of proving infringement occurred — the defendant’s declaration of non-infringement is the default winner.

Consistent with Strike 3’s lack of proof of copying, John Doe’s expert has indicated that John Doe’s computer does not contain any of the motion pictures described in Exhibit A to the Complaint. No genuine dispute of material fact exists, and John Doe is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. John Doe’s motion for summary judgment is GRANTED, and a declaratory judgment of non-infringement will be entered.

Since Strike 3 lost — and engaged in a bad faith dismissal to dodge paying Doe’s legal fees — the defendant and his representation are getting almost everything they’ve asked for. That’s $ 40,000 in legal fees and $ 7,000 costs Strike 3 will have to pay for two years’ of failed litigation. But mostly Strike 3 paying because it tried to forfeit rather than take the L.

As the court notes, the tide of trollish litigation may be slowing, thanks to the Ninth Circuit’s Cobbler Nevada decision. It’s not over yet. This isn’t the last time we’ll see a troll light itself on fire in its haste to escape a losing lawsuit. But it’s enjoyable all the same.

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Twitter Asks Judge To Dismiss Devin Nunes’ Frivolous Lawsuit Via Section 230

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It’s kind of incredible that Devin Nunes’ first frivolous, censorial lawsuit is still going on — but it is. This is the one against two satirical Twitter accounts that made fun of Nunes, as well as political strategist Liz Mair and Twitter the company itself. Twitter had tried to get the case dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, saying the case belonged in California, but that failed. Now Twitter has played the next obvious card: saying that Section 230 of the CDA prevents Nunes from suing it over the satirical accounts. Tragically, the Fresno Bee has not posted the actual legal filings, and they’re in a state court that does not make them easily accessible to the public, so I don’t have the full filing yet. However, from the Fresno Bee’s account, it appears that Twitter is making a pretty typical CDA 230 argument:

“Congress granted providers of online platforms like Twitter broad immunity from claims that seek to hold them liable for harms caused by defamatory or otherwise harmful content that appeared on the provider’s platform but were created by third parties,” the motion to dismiss reads. “(The law) protects such providers not only from liability but also from being subjected to the burdens of discovery or other aspects of litigation.”

The federal law referenced specifically states that no providers of an “interactive computer service” should be treated as “the publisher or speaker” of things said by a third party on their platform.

The filing highlights that the negligence claim against Twitter is really just an attempt to route around 230:

“The sole claim (Nunes) asserts against Twitter — for negligence — rests entirely on the theory that Twitter did not prevent third parties from posting the statements on the Twitter platform and/or did not do enough to remove the statements after they were posted,” Twitter’s new motion reads.

If the judge in the case actually understands Section 230, this should be an easy dismissal for Twitter. However, to date, the judge has made a series of perplexing decisions that seem to go against most understanding on other laws. That doesn’t mean he won’t eventually dismiss the case, but it might make folks worry that this judge is more inclined than he should be to let the case move forward for the time being.

Of course, assuming the judge actually does dismiss the claims against Twitter on 230 grounds, I fully expect, Rep. Devin Nunes to join the chorus of clueless elected officials seeking to end Section 230.

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No Surprise: Judge Says US Government Can Take The Proceeds From Snowden’s Book

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Back in the fall, we noted that, even if we thought it was silly, under existing law, it seemed highly likely that the DOJ would win its lawsuit against the publisher for Ed Snowden’s memoir, Permanent Record. As I noted at the time, the government and the intelligence community in particular take the issue of “pre-publication review” incredibly seriously. Basically, if you take a job in the intel community, you sign a lifelong contract that says if you ever publish a book about anything regarding the intelligence community, you have to submit it for pre-publication review. Officially, this is to avoid classified information showing up in a book. Unofficially, it also gives the US government a sneak peek at all these books, and sometimes (it appears) allows them to hide stuff they’d rather not be public.

As I noted when the lawsuit was filed, there is another ongoing lawsuit challenging pre-publication review requirements on 1st Amendment grounds — but given the state of the law today, it seemed pretty clear that Snowden would lose this case. And, that’s exactly what’s happened. Judge Liam O’Grady (who seems to end up with all sorts of high profile cases) easily ruled in favor of the government last week. In short, the court says: an unambiguous contract is an unambiguous contract.

The plain meaning of the contracts set forth above require prepublication review of a signatory’s public disclosure which refer to, mention, or are based upon, classified information or intelligence activities or materials. The contractual language here is clear, and this Court is therefore legally barred from accepting extrinsic evidence of course of performance, course of dealing, and common trade practices.

That was in response to Snowden’s legal team from the ACLU trying to seek discovery to get more evidence to support his case before it went up for dismissal. No go. In the end, a contract is a contract:

The terms of these Secrecy Agreements are clear, and provide that he is in breach of his contracts and the fiduciary duties identified therein if his public disclosures include the type of information and materials the contracts required to be submitted for prepublication review. Specifically, the CIA Secrecy Agreement requires prepublication review of “any writing… which contains any mention of intelligence data or activities, or contains any other information or material that might be based on” certain information, which was “received or obtained in the course of [CIA] employment… that is marked as classified or [known to be classified or known to be in the process of classification determination].”… Similarly, the NSA Secrecy Agreement require prepublication review of “all information or materials… prepared for public disclosure which contain or purport to contain, refer to, or are based upon protected information,” which is “[i]nformation obtained as a result of [a] relationship with NSA which is classified or in the process of a classification determination,” including but “not limited to, intelligence and intelligence-related information.”… Because there is no genuine dispute of material fact that Snowden publicly disclosed the type of information and materials described above in Permanent Record and his speeches, the Government is entitled to summery judgment on both Counts.

As Snowden pointed out when this happened, all this has really done is to draw more public attention to his book, of course. But, I can see from the DOJ’s viewpoint that it may have felt that if it didn’t go after Snowden and Macmillan for this, then others might question why they had to go through pre-publication review as well.

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Facebook must face data breach class action on security, but not damages: judge – Reuters

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Facebook must face data breach class action on security, but not damages: judge  Reuters
“data breach” – read more